


it's a departure

by tinypersonhotel



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: College AU, Confessions, M/M, Post-Canon, Study Buddies, being a college first-year is a mess. orgo is a mess., self-conscious teens ahoy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-13
Updated: 2017-03-13
Packaged: 2018-10-04 05:56:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10269779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinypersonhotel/pseuds/tinypersonhotel
Summary: Tsukishima wants to pass organic chemistry, but more than that, he wants Akaashi to be his friend. Or something.





	

**Author's Note:**

> hello, giftee! thanks for being the reason for my first post in maaany months! i am happy i got the chance to write tsukkiaka. and also that i got to write about studying, which is a prompt i LOVE. tsukki’s kind of a grump here, sorry; i thought he might be kind of a grumpy college kid. i picture him as a much happier adult, i promise, haha. no warnings, really, except a bit of alcohol consumption. also, they say the f-word a lot, because, well, i say the f-word a lot

Furukawa Hall 530 looked sleepy on a Friday afternoon, the sun filtered away by dusty windows. Its students sat in scattered rows and were silent, save for the scratching of their pens against paper.

Tsukishima whispered, “What the fuck.”

Some curse of acoustics carried his panic across the lecture hall, down to the first row. Everyone laughed. Except for the professor, who glared. Great. Best outcome. Tsukishima felt angry at himself, then his classmates, then the architect who planned the room.

Mostly, though, he was pissed at organic chemistry.

As soon as 5:15 rolled around, Tsukishima handed in the quiz with all but the first question blank. He evacuated the disaster site as efficiently as he could without running, and skipped the uncomfortable silence of the elevator for the stairs. His legs were long enough he could take two at a time. He wished badly he were already back in his apartment, playing Splatoon with Yamaguchi over Skype.

He made it as far as the lobby before Akaashi tapped him on the shoulder. Tsukishima blanched. Even though they’d been on the same campus for more than a semester now, Tsukishima hadn’t exchanged more than pleasantries with him.

“You really broke the tension in there,” Akaashi said, as Tsukishima continued out the door. He had no trouble matching Tsukishima’s pace. Unfortunately, Akaashi was probably one of the only kids in orgo who could keep up without breaking into an all-out run.

“Yeah,” Tsukishima said. “That was totally my intention.”

“You wanna know the worst part?” Akaashi asked.

“No.”

“That was only the first quiz. It’s only gonna get harder from here on out.”

Tsukishima pinched the bridge of his nose under his glasses. “Akaashi-san, please. I’m in no condition to weather any more bad news.”

“Oh, come on. It couldn’t have been that bad. Not for you,” Akaashi said, doing pretend calculations on his fingers. “What’s the damage, you think?”

Tsukishima shrugged. “Does the professor give partial credit?”

“Yes.”

“Are the quizzes curved?”

“Probably not this first one.”

Tsukishima stopped in his tracks.

“That bad, huh?” Akaashi waited for him to unfreeze, squinting up at the trees along the walkway. Tsukishima remembered when he first met Akaashi he was always squinting then, too. For some reason, it had been the funniest thing in the world—this guy who always looked pained, or judgmental, or incredulous. 

Now that Tsukishima saw him around campus, though, he realized a lot of the squinting was just Akaashi’s face. He squinted at small print and at the sun and at long sidewalks. Maybe he needed glasses.

Akaashi looked back from the trees to Tsukishima. Tsukishima, who was looking at Akaashi. He aborted the train of thought and glanced down at his sneakers. Boy, he really needed a new pair.

“Sorry,” Akaashi said suddenly. “I’m not cramping your style, am I?”

“Please.” Tsukishima gestured at his hoodie. “There’s nothing here to cramp.”

“That’s a relief. I thought you were avoiding me.”

Tsukishima shrugged, a little embarrassed at being caught. Maybe he was not as subtle a person as he thought he was—in retrospect, he probably looked pretty fucking ridiculous taking the stairs two steps at a time down, which, on second thought, was not something people do in that direction. Ugh. 

“I didn’t want to bother you and your friends,” he admitted.

“Those guys? They’re from intramural,” Akaashi said. “Actually, we’re recruiting for our study group. You’d fit right in.”

“Study group,” Tsukishima repeated.

Akaashi’s eyes widened, which was unfamiliar. “Tsukishima, don’t tell me you’re taking orgo and you don’t have a study group. Do you study on your own?”

“I study…occasionally.”

“Oh, jeez. I forgot. You’re a first-year.” Akaashi patted his back sympathetically, but he was wearing a backpack, so he couldn’t actually feel it. 

“Listen,” Akaashi continued. “I don’t mean to overstep, but like—you’re one of those kids who’s never had to study before, aren’t you?”

Tsukishima picked up his pace again. “I will neither confirm nor deny that statement.”

Akaashi huffed a laugh at this. “You should study with us. You have to, anyway. You’ve got no choice. It’s orgo.”

“Maybe,” Tsukishima said, though he was really thinking, no way in hell.

“Why not?” Akaashi asked, like he could hear the thought. Tsukishima wasn’t sure how to answer—because he had a habit of saying ‘no’ to things? Because studying with other people meant having to look stupid in front of them? Because he used noise-cancelling headphones when he did his work, and they were kind of expensive, so he’d rather not let them go to waste?

“This is my stop,” Tsukishima said. They’d arrived at the subway station, though the walk across campus usually seemed much longer.

“Okay. Don’t forget my invitation. You’re gonna need all the help you can get.”

Akaashi was not being unkind, but Tsukishima stopped smiling. He remembered how mortifying t was that his whole class heard him curse at a quiz and felt suddenly too preoccupied to be flattered by Akaashi’s attention. He had to go home and feel sorry for himself (a tradition, he was sure, of first-year college students across the nation).

They said goodbye, and Akaashi started on his way. “Wait a sec,” Tsukishima called.

“Yeah?” Akaashi asked, raising his voice above the Tokyo din.

“Why are you even in this class? Aren’t you a second-year?” He added, for good measure, “Akaashi-senpai?”

“Failed it last semester.” Akaashi’s eyes crinkled like he was about to laugh. “See you next week, then.”

 

 

 

Tsukishima’s apartment felt stuffy after stewing with the windows closed all day. He propped one open with his orgo textbook and placed the 7/11 bag on his desk. 

Yamaguchi wasn’t online yet, so he laid down on the carpet and stared at the speckled ceiling, planning the rest of his evening: fifteen minutes of wallowing, Splatoon until he and Yamaguchi realized it was way past dinner time, and a second convenience store run of the day. No, third—he’d bought Red Bull before his quiz. (It had not counteracted his lack of study.)

Tsukishima sighed, as was his habit. Being a college first-year was not fun, exactly. He was still adrift socially and had been procrastinating getting a part-time job. Plus he missed his mother’s cooking. On the other hand, Tokyo was still Tokyo: He could go for long walks without ever getting bored. 

The sigh was not heavy. He realized his mood was not nearly as sour as he had anticipated. Huh. Talking to Akaashi must have really cheered him up. Which was kind of pathetic, but Tsukishima was pretty lonely these days.

Skype rang.

“You’re smiling,” Yamaguchi said.

“Am not,” he replied.

“Are too.”

Tsukishima held his palm in front of his webcam.

“Tsukki, come on,” Yamaguchi complained.

“We’re not going to be looking at each other anyway,” Tsukishima said. “And I’m not smiling. I call Roller.”

 

 

Orgo lectures ran Monday-Wednesday-Friday, so Tsukishima tried to put his conversation with Akaashi out of his mind for the weekend. There was no use thinking about it while he was making instant curry on his single-burner stove or lugging clothes to the coin laundry down the street. Nothing was worse for making friends than seeming like you really, really needed friends. Desperation was early-friendship poison.

Still, he had always admired Akaashi at their training camps. How he acted a little disgruntled at all times, but never seemed to put anyone off. Akaashi had infinite patience for the things he deemed worth it. Or at least that was Tsukishima’s assessment.

At the same time, it was that patience that made Tsukishima anxious to be around him. He didn’t like being aware he was a person who demanded others’ patience.

That Monday, Tsukishima sat next to Akaashi and his intramural friends. They exchanged hellos, but not much else; as soon as the lecture began, the whole class sat on their edge of their seats, transcribing the professor’s words as exactly as they could manage. 

Wednesday was much the same, except at the end of the period the professor returned the previous week’s quiz and announced—as if it were a normal, acceptable thing—that the average was a 49. 

On the first quiz!

Thursday nights were going to be rough this semester, Tsukishima thought. Quizzes were Fridays, and problem sets were due the same day, and it was impossible to do some of the problems without the notes from Wednesday lectures. That Thursday he buckled down with two cans of coffee, one Red Bull, some plastic-wrapped convenience store bread, and strawberry jam. He worked his way through the loaf and the first two problems as 9 pm became midnight, and he was still only halfway done. Plus he would have to study for the quiz; his Fridays were too stacked with bio labs to study during the day. Orgo was turning out to be a tedious logistical nightmare on top of everything else.

It didn’t help his pace that he kept thinking of Akaashi. Things like how badly he wanted to commiserate over the ridiculousness of Problem 3a. Or Akaashi a little impressed that Tsukishima really did know how to work hard. The 0.5 lead of his pencil snapped against his notebook and he halfway jumped out of his skin. Oh yeah, he thought. That’s why I don’t drink coffee. Suddenly he missed the low-caffeine lemon tea Yamaguchi’s dad had made for them while they were studying for their college entrance exams, crouched around the low plastic table in the Yamaguchis’ living room.

Ugh. So far, Tsukishima had not been adjusting to college as effortlessly as he imagined he would. Calm, it turned out, was not the same thing as mature. He longed for second-year wisdom. Third-year jadedness. Anything between now and the frantic job search of year four.

As for Akaashi, well—wanting to get to know someone was new to him. He and Yamaguchi had just kind of fallen in step with each other, back on their elementary school team, where there they’d been paired off by their mutually unsporty attitudes. Tsukishima was grateful for Yamaguchi, of course, although there had been times he had felt like he was holding Yamaguchi back. Things had continued much the same until he really got to know his teammates at Karasuno, and perhaps that was the problem: he’d gotten used to having more than one good friend. Now here he was, back at square one—a college first-year and utterly unable to make friends on his own.

Tsukishima sighed. He was spiraling, again. He just had to plug away at his work and he’d feel better; he knew that. 

He couldn’t see out the window with the fluorescent Tokyo lights beaming his own haggard expression back at him, but birds had begun to twitter on the narrow balcony. He looked over his shoulder at the clock: nearly five in the morning. The problem set was done. A reasonable number of practice questions were completed. He stood in the shower letting the water sear his skin for fifteen minutes, then crashed for a quick nap.

Tsukishima showed up to orgo in the same clothes he’d worn Thursday. At least he’d managed to change since Wednesday. He was so delirious he laughed at the thought, but when the professor started the period with a quiz, he sobered up instantly.

Tsukishima managed to answer four of five questions. It felt like a total victory.

After class, he and Akaashi lingered in their seats as the rest of their classmates filtered out, most looking some combination of disturbed and defeated. Tsukishima couldn’t help but feel a little reassured in his ability to meet minimum requirements no matter the situation.

“You took my advice?” Akaashi asked, shuffling through his notes.

“It wasn’t advice so much as it was you making fun of my pain. But yes. I did study this week, and it did pay off.”

Akaashi tilted his head. “Guess this means you don’t need our study group anymore, huh?”

Tsukishima pulled his hands out of his sleeves. “Maybe not.”

“You’re still welcome to join, of course.”

Tsukishima hesitated, though he had hoped badly that Akaashi would bring up the study group again. He thought about the dreadful all-nighter. He thought about dreadful all-nighters every Thursday for the rest of the semester. He thought about having someone to wake him up, you know, in case he fell asleep. It seemed a pleasant alternative to near-destroying his bladder each week with several hours of continuous caffeine intake.

“You know what,” Tsukishima said. “I’ll join.”

Akaashi smiled. “Great. Wanna meet at 8:00? I need a nap.”

Tsukishima, exhausted, agreed.

 

 

 

Tsukishima prioritized sleep over food, and his stomach was growling by the time he met up with Akaashi at 8:00. Akaashi stood beneath the neon display of a souvenir shop, his face outlined in pink and red, hands balled up in his sweatshirt pocket. Tsukishima hoped they were headed for a family restaurant, but he didn’t want to ask too many questions as Akaashi led him through the day-glo walls of buildings. Tokyo was so bright it made all the dark spaces look darker; between streets, Akaashi’s hair and sweatshirt sometimes seemed to disappear. Tsukishima had not yet developed a particular attachment to the city, but he could feel it becoming a home, sometimes, in moments like these. 

To Tsukishima’s surprise, Akaashi led them to a basement izakaya, where they crouched around a table in the corner. Tsukishima pulled his notes from his bag. It was dim, but he could see their teeth and the whites of their eyes reflected in the polished wood.

“Did you get what was going on today, at the end?” Akaashi asked, squinting at the menu. “With the…electrolytic aromatic substitution?”

“I think that’s ‘electrophilic.’ And no, not really.”

“Well, we kind ran out of time. She’ll probably explain it better next week.”

“Let’s not count on it.”

Akaashi pushed the call button and ordered beer and kara-age. Tsukishima went for a beer, though he regretted it the moment the word came out of his mouth. He wouldn’t be 20 for nearly a year; the thought of being carded in front of his senpai was too mortifying to bear.

To Tsukishima’s relief and surprise, they did study. He found the ambience of the izakaya actually helped him focus the same way his music did, and he traded notebooks with Akaashi to fill in the blanks in each other’s lecture notes. 

“Akaashi-san, your handwriting is terrible.”

Akaashi snorted, but didn’t look up. He was busy scribbling an ethanol compound on a napkin. “No one under 40 has nice handwriting anymore. Hey, is this right?”

“I can’t read upside down.”

Akaashi skewered another piece of chicken. “Well, no one’s perfect.”

“Some of us can’t read upside down, others can’t write neatly for shit.”

Akaashi downed the last of his drink in response.

“I’ve never heard of studying in an izakaya before,” Tsukishima said, gesturing at Akaashi’s glass. “Isn’t this one step forward, two steps back? It doesn’t seem like you.”

“It doesn’t?” Akaashi’s face went a little blank, or something. Maybe he was mad, Tsukishima thought, but he got a feeling—somehow—that Akaashi was prompting him to be honest. Maybe because Tsukishima himself was not in the habit of asking about himself at the risk of sounding self-interested, he could recognize the same in Akaashi.

After stalling with a long sip of water, he decided to say, “You’re strategic. You were always doing things efficiently on the court, you know?”

“It’s called multi-tasking, Tsukishima.” Akaashi seemed a little relieved—maybe even glad—and he shrugged. “You’re not wrong. But when I was younger I never let myself have any fun. There was a lot of self-seriousness. Or at least self-imposed seriousness.”

Tsukishima nodded. It was encouraging to hear Akaashi speak frankly, but even more so, it made him kind of glad to feel like—he was being told a secret. Tsukishima didn’t have enough beer in him to feel so uninhibited to respond in kind—he’d never had enough beer in him for something like that, now that he thought of it—but he found himself saying, suddenly, “In middle school I always wanted to be a physics major.”

Akaashi looked up from his drink, eyes narrow. “Why are you in bio?”

“Seemed easier than physics.”

Akaashi laughed. “Orgo’s there to punish kids with that attitude.”

“Fair,” Tsukishima said. “And also…”

“Yeah?” Akaashi asked.

“This is the whole study group? Just you and me drinking?”

Akaashi grinned like he’d been caught. “Listen, I hate to do this to you… 

“Akaashi-senpai,” Tsukishima groaned.

“…But, Tsukishima, you’re not a total fucking numbskull.”

“Gee. Thank you.” 

“The intramural guys from class are nice, but you know. They’re from intramural.”

“Yeah, well. I don’t mind if they’re not in the study group. They don’t seem to have taken as generously to my attitude as you have.” Tsukishima sighed, feigning annoyance. “What’s up with that, by the way? You’re rude pretty much constantly. Why doesn’t anyone mind?”

“It’s because I am also very funny,” Akaashi said. “Also, you say mean things just to drive people away, not to be funny. People can tell the difference. They are not as stupid as you probably think.”

“I don’t think everyone is stupid. I’m just saying there’s a higher concentration of it on an intramural sports team than in the average population.”

“Well, you’re probably not wrong.”

“I’m usually not.”

“Except on orgo quizzes.”

“Except on orgo quizzes,” Tsukishima repeated. They raised their glasses and finished off their drinks.

 

 

 

So it became a tradition: on Fridays, they would go home and nap after class, then spend time studying in family restaurants and libraries and bars, enjoying snacks and sometimes drinks and always each other’s company. Tsukishima was right; this was not efficient, and they always got distracted.

But the thing was, they could talk forever. It was nice to have someone to fill in the gaps Yamaguchi’s absence left—gaps that Yamaguchi felt guilty about, Tsukishima could see the internal struggle, but Yamaguchi was also having so much fun at his own school. He got along well with the other kids in his major, and he was having way more fun than Tsukishima had initially realized being a librarian for the jazz choir. Tsukishima was happy for him.

Tsukishima had also conjectured that, eventually, how energized he felt around Akaashi would go away. But it hadn’t. One day in lecture one of the intramural guys—Kenji?—remarked that he and Akaashi were like, the same person, to which Tsukishima accidentally responded, “That’s incredibly flattering to me.” They had not let him live it down since, which was a headache, but not any worse than the baseline headache Tsukishima experienced at basically all times.

Finally he and Yamaguchi found a Saturday evening to play Splatoon again, and Tsukishima found that while Yamaguchi had told him loads about his classes and the jazz choir and the campus and his terrifying law professor, most of Tsukishima’s stories were in one way or another related to Akaashi.

“You’re sure getting along with Akaashi-san,” Yamaguchi remarked.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Tsukishima asked, more for to be mean for fun than just mean. They were only on voice call, but Tsukishima could hear Yamaguchi’s wheels spinning on the other side, trying to think of how to respond.

“I just mean, like.” Yamaguchi paused. “Do you have a friend crush on him?”

“What the fuck is a friend crush,” Tsukishima replied as petulantly as he could.

Yamaguchi paused again. “Do you have a crush crush?”

Tsukishima considered telling Yamaguchi to shut up. But instead he paused the match and sat for a full minute, jaw hanging open. Yamaguchi didn’t say anything, just breathed on the other side of the call. Tsukishima wondered if there was a limit to Yamaguchi’s patience and prayed that he might just hang up.

Before Tsukishima really knew what was about to come out of his mouth, he said, quietly, “That could be it.”

“What! That’s amazing, Tsukki!” Yamaguchi’s excitement clipped the mic. “And scary! Oh my god.”

The word scary made Tsukishima’s stomach lurch. This was bad. “This is bad, right?” he asked Yamaguchi.

“It’s not bad if he likes you, too.”

“Yeah, sure,” Tsukishima scoffed. But something about hearing those words—if he likes you, too—was miraculous. Like a whole nighttime avenue he had never noticed before had suddenly lit up Tokyo-bright. Tsukishima felt strangely okay. “Yeah, wouldn’t that be something,” he said, and unpaused the game. 

 

 

 

Another habit the two of them established was to switch quizzes as soon as they were returned, and break the news to each other after class. If they got distracted by a bad grade mid-lecture, it would mean wasting time teaching the material to themselves later. This was the most efficient part of their system. By the time they reached the last midterm before the final, this process had become automatic, and the intramural guys had stopped poking fun at their neuroticism. 

Speaking of—Akaashi had asked Tsukishima to be his study buddy because the intramural guys were hopeless, but Tsukishima had seen some of their scores over their shoulders. None of them seemed to be failing any worse than Tsukishima was. Why had Akaashi come to him? Did Tsukishima’s glasses really make him look that smart? It seemed too amateurish an explanation for Akaashi’s extension of friendship.

The professor recollected the midterms after people had a chance to look at their scores, so Tsukishima wrote down Akaashi’s score on the last page of his notebook. After class, they slipped away to a secluded alcove by a janitor’s closet.

“How did I do?” Tsukishima asked.

Akaashi squinted. “How did I do?”

“Oh, jeez.”

“On the count of three?”

“Three, two, one—”

“Thirty-eight,” Akaashi said, at the same time Tsukishima said, “Forty-four.”

“Oh, fuck,” Akaashi said, at the same time Tsukishima said, “Fuck me.”

Tsukishima’s eyes rolled up to the ceiling. “I bombed the last midterm.”

“We don’t know what the curve will be.”

“We’re going to have to do really well on the final,” Tsukishima said.

Misery loves company; that was the reason study groups were formed in the first place. But Tsukishima could barely appreciate Akaashi’s company, in the moment. He wished that Akaashi had done well on the exam. At least one of them, so that there’d be hope of tutoring each other before the final.

Tsukishima still felt like he was wading through a swamp when he and Akaashi came to the gates of the school. He opened his mouth to speak, but it didn’t seem like words were going to happen. He wasn’t sure what to say—he had never failed a class before. He’d never even gotten a C on a report card.

Akaashi placed a hand on Tsukishima’s backpack, like he did the day of that first quiz. “Hey,” he said. “Wanna come over?”

Tsukishima was still a little too gloomy to be properly shocked. “No nap today?”

Akaashi shrugged. “I’m afraid once I go home, I’m not gonna feel like going out again.”

“I know what you mean.”

“Let’s pick up snacks on the way, then.”

“And beer.”

Tsukishima felt a tiny bit better after that, walking side by side with Akaashi. He remembered his conversation with Yamaguchi a few weeks before and let himself really look at Akaashi. He didn’t stare much, which was too bad. Akaashi looked endearing, frazzled like this—utterly defeated by the most heinous orgo exam of all time. 

They wandered dazedly across the street to a FamilyMart. Tokyo felt as sleepy as Tsukishima did, at 5:30 on a Friday in January. By the time the city would wake up for the nights out in izakayas and the dense labyrinth of clubs in Shibuya, Tsukishima hoped he would already be asleep. While Akaashi was lugging two packs of beer to the counter, Tsukishima blinked at the neat, backlit rows of onigiri. He knocked a bunch indiscriminately into the small, green shopping basket and practically slammed it on the counter, frightening the clerk.

They continued the walk to Akaashi’s apartment in silence. Tsukishima felt guilty for being kind of excited; Akaashi seemed gloomier than ever.

Maybe Akaashi’s wasn’t gloomy, exactly. Nervous.

Tsukishima pretended he didn’t know what Akaashi was nervous about.

Akaashi’s apartment was as neat as Tsukishima’s, which was a relief. He didn’t like clutter. There was a nice view of the city street, too. Tsukishima imagined he wouldn’t mind spending a lot of time at Akaashi’s place.

The pretense of studying fell away almost instantly to a litany of complaints. The badly photocopied pages of the exam. The TAs who had given them useless exam intel. The stuffiness of the room, the unfairness of the focus on material from the most recent lecture. 

“I totally fucking blanked on aldol condensations,” Akaashi complained around a mouthful of rice. “Like, the whole thing. I shouldn’t be surprised I did so poorly when I had no fucking clue what was going on for like two pages right at the beginning.”

“I didn’t think that part was so bad,” Tsukishima said. Akaashi glared, and Tsukishima flicked his forehead. “Just because I remembered aldol condensations super well doesn’t mean I knew how the fuck to do anything else. Like please tell me you know the first fucking thing about conjugated systems, because like, what the fuck.”

“Yeah, conjugated systems were fine. Did you get the electrophilic whatever stuff?”

“Yeah. But did you get the alkynes part?”

Akaashi nodded, wide-eyed. Then he laughed, and then they were both laughing, even harder than that time in high school when Lev accidentally punched Bokuto.

“Oh my god,” Akaashi said, wiping away tears. “Is it really possible we both fucked up exactly what the other one got right? We could totally still tutor each other.”

“Not…entirely…possible,” Tsukishima pointed out, still gasping. “Even if you added up our scores…it would be…less than a hundred.” This set both of them off again, and they laughed until they were so tired that Akaashi sprawled right across the floor, trying to breathe calmly, still shaking with laughter occasionally, eyes shut. Tsukishima watched his chest rise and fall beneath his black sweatshirt. He felt distinctly aware he was in Akaashi’s room, suddenly, which was a little terrifying. To be fair, Akaashi’s apartment was his room—it was just a bed and a desk and a square-meter kitchen, but Tsukishima wondered if it would be okay if he lay down, too.

Tsukishima tried to be graceful as he sunk to the floor, but he hit his elbow on the carpet and ended up starfished next to Akaashi.

“Nice,” Akaashi said.

“Shut up,” Tsukishima said, though he was deeply endeared by the laughter in Akaashi’s voice.

They laid there just breathing for a minute. Tsukishima was surprised what a toll five minutes of laughter had taken on his core. He wondered if Akaashi felt as exhausted as he did. He felt like he could sleep a month away on the harsh polyester carpet, he was so exhausted. From orgo. From laughing. From moving to a city alone, though he’d done it months ago, because that was the kind of exhaustion that persisted, one Akaashi had helped ameliorate, but still, that was just the tip of the iceberg. Tsukishima had a lot of bad feelings to make up for. But Akaashi was the one who made him understand, for the first time, that it was possible for sore spots to heal. It was possible for life to be more fun than it was a huge pain. 

“I’m really glad I failed,” Akaashi said hoarsely.

“What the fuck are you talking about,” Tsukishima mumbled.

Akaashi pushed himself up on an elbow. Looking at him from this angle made Tsukishima’s chest hurt. “Not the exam. But last semester. If I hadn’t failed, we might not have run into each other like this.”

Tsukishima closed his eyes. “Right. Run into each other.”

“What? Was that too casual?” Akaashi asked. “I’m glad we got to reconnect. I’m glad we’ve spent all our Fridays together. I like spending time with you, Tsukishima.”

Tsukishima’s eyes flew open and wished they hadn’t: There he went again, being transparent He wasn’t used to it. Akaashi was the only one who could read him—Akaashi, who never seemed to be flustered, no matter how extreme the personality he encountered was. The reflexive stab of self-loathing was overwhelmed by joy and nausea, and Tsukishima realized he was smiling.

“I like spending time with you, senpai,” Tsukishima said. He was promptly smacked on the chest. “Ow.”

“Don’t senpai me,” Akaashi said. “I like you, Tsukishima. I want more than just Fridays with you.”

Tsukishima froze. It was one of the frankest, most flattering things anyone had ever said to him—and it had come from someone he’d had a crush on since probably high school. From probably the first boy he’d ever liked. All of the shitty, hopeless feelings crushing his chest seemed to loosen, like his ribs had been tied up too tight with a ribbon all this time. Tsukishima sat up—god, his core really was weak nowadays—and buried his face in his knees so Akaashi couldn’t see whatever his face was doing.

“You sure know how to pick them,” Tsukishima mumbled into his knee.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Akaashi asked. 

“It means I like you, too.”

“Good.” Akaashi placed a palm on Tsukishima’s shin. “You’re brushing off my question.”

“I figured it was rhetorical.”

“You are kinda weird, aren’t you.”

They laid on the carpet and kept talking, the way they’d been talking all semester. The beer sat untouched on top of the fridge; the night came in blue and orange through the slats in the blinds. 

 

 

Their plan to get an A on the last quiz before the final was dashed when Tsukishima realized the professor had made it one big thirteen-part question about fucking spectroscopy. He and Akaashi exchanged can you believe it glances, and it made him feel a little better.

“Come over again,” Akaashi said after the exam, and they both walked automatically into the 7/11 and stocked up on snacks and rice balls. Orgo was killing Tsukishima’s health. Akaashi, of course, somehow still looked dignified for all that he lived with bags under his eyes and his recycling bin was filled to the brim with empty cans of Red Bull. Med student chic, Tsukishima figured.

“Let’s not front,” Akaashi said, once they were in his apartment. “Nap first. Then we study.” They sprawled out on the futon together, not even touching, but Tsukishima suddenly felt like he wanted to cry, like he was being allowed to do something he thought he’d never be allowed to do. He counted to ten, trying to loosen the knot in his chest. Akaashi shifted in his sleep, and their wrists touched. Suddenly the tension in Tsukishima’s back melted away, as if this were the first time he’d ever actually relaxed, and he was dragged into a sleep that felt like gravity gradually increasing.

He woke up a few hours later, long after sunset. Akaashi sat next to him cross-legged on the futon. Tsukishima leaned against him and saw he was texting Bokuto. “How is he?”

“Really good, it seems like.”

Tsukishima looked at him skeptically.

“Hey. I’m not the only strict setter out there.” Akaashi dropped his phone somewhere in the fluffy futon. “He gets along with his university team really well. He’s kind of a star on campus. People like Bokuto.”

Tsukishima shook his head, which he knew Akaashi could only feel against his shoulder. “I like Bokuto.”

“Good,” Akaashi said. “Because he keeps bugging me about wanting to have a sleepover with us and Kuroo.”

“Oh, god.”

Tsukishima laid back down. He was still disoriented from the nap, and felt like he could probably sleep through the night, if he tried. But the final was next week, and there was no class in the morning, so tonight would have to be a critical study period.

“You like it here, don’t you?” Akaashi asked, still on his phone. Tsukishima’s head was close to his leg, so he couldn’t see his face.

“On your futon?”

Akaashi flicked Tsukishima’s forehead absent-mindedly. “In Tokyo.”

“It’s cramped. I hit my head on the stairs up to my apartment once a month.”

“You miss the open fields of Miyagi?” Akaashi asked.

“Hardly.”

Akaashi laughed. “You’re a grim dude, Tsukishima.”

It wasn’t an accusation, but Tsukishima felt a little lost, suddenly. Did Akaashi not understand how listlessly he had lived most of his life? Had he not managed to communicate, without saying it, that Akaashi was one of the only people he’d ever met who made Tsukishima want to swim against the current of his own ennui? Tsukishima told himself he was being ridiculous—but at the same time, the thought that Akaashi’s feelings might not be as serious as his own implanted itself in his brain. He could dig it out later, sure, but it would sit and grow for a while first.

“What’s on your mind?” Akaashi asked, and Tsukishima realized he had gone silent for a number of minutes.

The way the question was phrased, Tsukishima found himself unable to answer it. If Akaashi had asked whether anything was on his mind, it would have been easy to say no. But Akaashi’s question demanded an explanation—nothing was never a convincing answer, and Tsukishima wasn’t sure he could explain why he’d suddenly just stopped talking. There was no reasonable way to explain it; Tsukishima had just thought himself into a bad mood. It was just something he did, sometimes. He intended to grow out of it, one day, but he hadn’t yet.

So, after what was probably another minute or two, Tsukishima said, “I can’t explain it.”

“Try me,” Akaashi said instantly.

“It’s too much of a hassle. I already have to deal with it. You shouldn’t have to, too.”

Akaashi raised an eyebrow. “You know I don’t find you draining, right? I just like you because I like you.”

“Then it’s all in your head.” 

“Come on, Kei,” he said. “Don’t be petulant.”

Something about the casual Kei was the last straw, and Tsukishima stood up and zipped his bag shut with a loud, angry sound. “We should focus,” he said. “The exam’s in a week. I can’t study with you distracting me.”

Akaashi looked up at him, mouth set in a line, but didn’t move. After a moment, he nodded a bit. The little motion was enough for Tsukishima to feel as if he had been cut loose—and he felt relief as he left the apartment, like he was rising up from the bottom of a lake.

By the time he reached the street, though, he was utterly at sea. Tsukishima went home, his footsteps stomping mis-take mis-take along the sidewalk.

***

The days before the final passed miserably. Tsukishima coped relatively well, throwing himself into studying. He ignored Yamaguchi’s texts, except to congratulate him on making tenor in jazz choir, because he wasn’t perfect. He made that much clear to people right off the bat.

The studying was grueling, fueled only by oily, salty Styrofoam cups of ramen and the occasional apple slices he convinced himself to buy at 7/11. He winced his way through energy drinks and his hands shook on his pencil. He knew this was going to be one of those exams he caught a cold from right after handing it in, and he stocked up on vitamin shots and flu masks as prep.

Tsukishima dreaded the exam as much as he couldn’t wait for it to be over. He wasn’t cramming anymore, at least; Tsukishima had metamorphosized into an organic chemistry robot, working through practice problems in a trance. Yeah, any question involving IR spectra was probably still going to murder his ass, but it’s not like it was possible to do well on an orgo final.

At the same time, the days he spent studying were days he didn’t have to see Akaashi. If not for the imminent exam, he would probably feel much more miserable about the whole situation. Tsukishima had avoided exes thus far by not dating. (Thoughts like this were followed by secret relief that Yamaguchi wasn’t there. By the time he’d made captain in third year, he had stopped indulging Tsukishima’s tendency to wallow.)

The rain was coming down in a hush the day of the exam. Tsukishima rolled over in bed, untwisting his legs from the sheets, fumbling for the glasses in their case on the floor. 5:26 came into focus on the electric clock. He sighed and stumbled to the bathroom.

The exam wasn’t until 7:30, so Tsukishima went out for some coffee and sat with his study guide open on the table in front of him. The coffee place was lively for such an early morning, kids probably from his campus cramming last-minute for their finals. Tsukishima took one look at his notes and decided against studying; there was no point in burning out before a three-hour exam. He looked at the half-full coffee in his hands and decided against finishing that, either; he wasn’t sure they’d be allowed to go to the bathroom during the test.

He ended up in the lecture hall at 7:00 am. He pushed on the tall, fake wooden doors and was surprised when they weren’t locked. The lights were still off, but the soft grey from the windows was enough to see Akaashi in the front row, sighing over a notebook. He turned around as soon as he heard the door open, and smiled a little, which was strange. He looked as terrible as Tsukishima probably did, though he had made a point of avoiding mirrors during exam weeks.

“Couldn’t sleep?” Akaashi asked, voice floating up from the front of the room.

“Apparently not,” said Tsukishima. He took shaky steps down the awkward lecture hall stairs and sat with two places between himself and Akaashi, as if the intramural guys were still there between them. Akaashi looked at him blankly than got up and moved one seat closer. He was holding something in his hand, Tsukishima realized. Akaashi pushed a big, rolled-up piece of paper across the counter without saying anything.

Tsukishima unfurled it uncertainly. It was about the size of a sign you’d see at a university sports game, covered in the hospital-themed stickers. Tsukishima laughed; the stickers were morbid. In big, careful letters—characters formed by someone with terrible handwriting who was clearly trying to be very careful—was a poster that said “GO KEI!” “BEAT ORGO!” From the center of the tube fell out a new eraser, just like the one that had almost been rubbed into near-nonexistence against problem sets and lecture notes.

“Where did you get hospital-themed stickers,” Tsukishima asked weakly, pushing the poster back toward Akaashi.

“I’m a med student.”

“That’s…not an explanation.” 

“Come on. It’s a pretty cute apology. I even had to ask Bokuto how to be cute.”

“You’re already cute. This poster is not.” Tsukishima knew his face was red.

“This poster is at least as cute as you are,” Akaashi said. God, Akaashi was adorable. And handsome. And funny and thoughtful and just—something beyond all those adjectives, each of which seemed increasingly insufficient the more he tried to pile them on top of each other. He understood, suddenly, what Akaashi had meant when he told Tsukishima that he liked him because he liked him. It wasn’t a casual or flippant thing to say at all. It was actually...kind of serious. Huh.

“Why are you apologizing to me?” Tsukishima asked, coming to his senses.

“I overstepped,” Akaashi said. “I thought maybe I could get you to talk about…your feelings, or something. But not everyone is in the mood to confront personal shit all the time, I get that. I thought maybe you got the impression I was trying to change you, which I guess I just. I don’t know. Spiraled a little. But I’m just happy when it seems like you don’t hate yourself.”

Tsukishima’s head spun. “Where did you get that impression?”

Akaashi looked at him flatly. “That you hate yourself?”

“No, that I thought…” Tsukishima sighed. “Never mind. Once this class is over, we will still hang out?”

Akaashi smiled. “I still want to date you, if that wasn’t clear.”

“Okay. Good.”

“Good?”

“I still want to date you, too.”

Akaashi looked around the classroom. No one was there, and he put his hand on Tsukishima’s knee. “And I’m sorry I called you Kei back then. It probably seemed condescending. I was calling you that in my head for longer, so I think it just kind of slipped out, you know?”

“Oh jeez,” Tsukishima said. “You actually like me. I can’t believe you actually like me.”

Akaashi pulled back his hand, grinning wryly. “Trust me. You’ll get used to me.”

It had felt like the end of everything, their argument—and now Tsukishima understood what a small thing it had been. He let go of a shaky breath and smiled. “You like me a lot, don’t you?” he taunted.

Akaashi only matched his expression, and another group of students entered the lecture hall, and the conversation was over. The hall filled with anxious murmurs and lucky pencil cases and color-coded study guides and seventy-five undergrads in sweatpants, and the clock read 7:28.

“Here it comes,” Tsukishima said, staring at the time.

“Not like we have a choice.” Akaashi said. “Come on, let’s do our best.”

On a Friday morning in February, Furukawa Hall 530 was frantic with the sound of pages flipping, and the cloud-filtered sunlight was filtered again by dusty windows. Tsukishima looked at the first question and began.


End file.
